On Mar 10 , at 5:07 AM, David wrote:
I would like to see America start using DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY
I can't agree to that one.
The ISO preferred arrangement is
YYYY-MM-DD
so that the numbers are in a logical progression from large to small,
just like our number system. (Also, in the ISO format the hyphen is
used instead of the slash).
Thus, just as the number
7248 means
7 thousands plus
2 hundreds plus
4 tens plus
8 units.
so also, the date
2009-03-10 means
2009 years
3 months and
10 days
(possibly followed by hours, minutes and second, as needed thus:
2009-03-10 13:15:00)
Note, too, that a four digit year is used. The silliness of shortening
the year to just the last two digits has been amply shown by some of
the confusion that occurred when we went from the 1900's to the
2000's. Let's not perpetuate the problem until we move into the 2100's.
(Aside:
The practice of shortening, say, 2009 to '09 reminds me of a question
I asked in grade school when my teacher was teaching us the
abbreviations of the months of the year. I asked her what the
abbreviation for "May" was. She told me, anyone who needs an
abbreviation for "May" is simply too lazy to be bothered with. So also
I would say, anyone who feels the need to shorten 2009 to '09 is just
too lazy to be bothered with.
end of aside)
I also agree with John Steele that, until there is some uniformity in
usage is obtained, substiting a three character alphabetic designation
for the month is desirable (even if not really standard). That, plus
insistence on using all four digits in the year, would make this:
2009 Mar 10
impossible to misinterpret no matter what other format would be more
familiar to anyone.
Regards,
Bill Hooper
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
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Make It Simple; Make It Metric!
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